Nexus - Migration of HP Blade Servers

[Mokhalil82]

Hi

I am new to DC Networking. I currently have an environment where we have core 6500 switches and connected into these are some HP Blade servers (Gen6, 7 and 8). Please see attachment

We are now replacing our core network with Some Nexus 7k cores with N5Ks. As well as migrating everything else across, we are also migrating the HP Blade servers. Now for these to work with the Nexus switches, we have purchased some B22 Fexes that will slot into the blades and provide uplinks to the 5Ks using VPC.

My question is, will it be possible to migrate the servers over without any downtime. If I was to get a trunk setup between the 6500 and the 7ks, then stretch the VLANS across, then when I move the gateways across for the servers, will they start using the 7ks as their gateway.

Or has someone done anything similar that can just give some pointers

Thanks

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I don't think you can switch from 6500s to 7ks without any downtime.  If you add a layer-2 link between the 6500s and the 7k, you still need some downtime to move the SVI for each vlan from the 6500s to the 7ks.  If it is possible and you have spare FEXs, I would build a parallel network as the one you have, do some testing to make sure everything is working the way it supposed to and slowly migrate from the 6500 to the new 7ks. This project does require some careful planning and testing before executing if you want to have the least amount of downtime.

HTH
 

[Mokhalil82]

Thanks Reza, Il be taking that approach